Friday, October 14, 2011

Occupy Wall Street IS NOT the Liberals’ Tea Party

For about a month now, the Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on, protesting things that, as I have said before, are none of their business like business profits and the size of corporate bonuses, not to mention the fact that businesses haven’t hired even though they have the money. (Which misses the entire point of why a business hires a new employee. I have the financial ability to hire a babysitter for Friday night. I don’t have a child, and thus I don’t NEED a babysitter. I’m not going to hire a babysitter so some teenager can have money.) Now the Left and the Drive-By Media want to compare this movement to the Tea Party.

Friends, Occupy Wall Street is not the liberal equivalent of the Tea Party for so very many reasons, some of which I will enumerate in a moment. Before I do, I’d like to explain why the left so desperately wants their own version of the Tea Party: They are jealous of the Tea Party. The Tea Party sprang up from the grassroots level without any prompting from the national party or massive donors. It came up because many Americans are frustrated with the way Obama in specific and government in general is going about their business. Out of that came a peaceful, respectful movement that has changed the political landscape. It is not unlike the way the Civil Rights movement sprung up…and once again, like the Civil Rights movement, it was a Republican movement. But I digress.

So know let’s talk about WHY Occupy Wall Street is not a Left wing equivalent of the Tea Party:

- The Tea Party happened on its own. Occupy Wall Street was created by Big Unions, liberal activist groups like MoveOn.org and other George Soros funded groups, and is being egged on by the mainstream Democrat Party. The Tea Party, in contrast, is often disliked by the mainstream Republican Party.

- There has still never been an arrest at a Tea Party rally. We in the Tea Party clean up after ourselves, we stick within the Time, Place and Manner restrictions placed on us by the protest permits we’re given, and do not cause problems for law enforcement or other people who are near our protest. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street has already seen dozens of arrests, have violated the Time, Place and Manner restrictions of their permits, have attempted to stop traffic by marching not on the sidewalks but in the streets, and have generally been menaces to those around them.

- The Tea Party knows what we stand for and what we are trying to achieve: Small, unobtrusive government and the maximum amount of freedom for all Americans that can be provided, a minimal tax burden, and equality of opportunity for all (not of result, but of opportunity). Interviews with Occupy Wall Street protesters show that they don’t have much of a platform, except for “life isn’t fair”, “someone else has what I want and I want it,” some sputtering about wealth inequality, and some bumper sticker slogans about the wealthy paying “their fair share” even though no one can define what that “fair share” is, except for it’s more than what’s being paid now.

- The Tea Party formed around its issues, Occupy Wall Street formed and NOW is trying to establish its issues. The Occupy Wall Street leadership has had to post a vote on its Facebook page to decide WHAT their demands are. They formed a protest, they’re in progress of protesting, and only now are they trying to figure out what they want. To use a term from the movie PCU, it’s a movement of Causeheads. There is a group of people who wants to protest SOMETHING, and now they are filling in their own private frustrations with an occasional semi-legitimate grievance. Meanwhile the Tea Party has always stood for specific Constitutional values.

No, my friends, Occupy Wall Street is not a leftwing equivalent of the Tea Party. It’s a cheap knockoff that rose up out of the liberal desire to protest anything that they don’t like, regardless of the legitimacy of those frustrations or their right to demand reparations for harms not perpetrated. The Democrat Party and the Left deeply desire their own version of the Tea Party. Unfortunately for liberals, Occupy Wall Street is not it.